Three on a Meathook (1973)

The beginning and ending of this salaciously titled grindhouse flick deliver exactly what you'd expect, clumsily filmed scenes of attractive women getting chased and slaughtered by a rural psychopath. In between, writer-director William Girdler attempts something that might generously be termed a character study, thanks to slow-moving scenes of a young man tormented by guilt over murders he doesn't remember committing. The juxtaposition of narrative elements is ridiculous, since scuzz-cinema fans are likely to get bored watching the protagonist fret, while those who engage with the picture's reflective elements will find the aimless scripting and lumpy performances disappointing. Girdler deserves credit for trying to inject humanity into a lurid drive-in flick, but the movie is way too sleazy to take seriously. And what's with all the musical interludes featuring characters walking through the countryside while hippy-dippy tunes play on the soundtrack? Anyway, country bumpkin Billy (James Pickett) encounters a group of young women after their car has broken down in the boonies. He offers lodging, but upon bringing the girls home, Billy's father (Charles Kissinger) warns that Billy is prone to violence around women. Sure enough, the girls are murdered that night by axe, knife, and shotgun, so the next day, the father cleans up the mess and tells Billy to head into town and get his head straight. The distraught young man strikes up a relationship with a friendly barmaid, eventually inviting her to visit the farm. This goes poorly. Girdler's "twist" in the final act is predictable, and the movie's logic problems are catastrophic. For instance, why doesn't anyone look for the women who go missing? Later in his career, Girdler made several enjoyably silly genre pictures (e.g., the 1976 creature feature Grizzly). Based on the dismaying evidence of this movie, he was wise to leave meatier subject matter (no pun intended) to others.

Three on a Meathook: LAME

Asylum of Satan (1972)

Mildly enjoyable in that familiar so-bad-it’s-good sort of way, schlocky supernatural thriller Asylum of Satan marked the directorial debut of William Girdler, whose later output includes the fabulously silly shockers Grizzly (1976) and The Manitou (1978). While this first effort lacks the gloss of those subsequent pictures, Asylum of Satan has Girdler’s usual attributes of far-out situations and zippy pacing. Put less gently, the movie is fast and stupid but without the compensatory quality of slick production values. The shaky premise goes something like this—after beautiful Lucina Martin (Carla Borelli) suffers an emotional episode of some sort, her doctor inexplicably transfers her to an asylum run by Dr. Jason Specter (Charles Kissinger). Populated by zonked-out patients wearing white-hooded robes, the asylum is a staging ground for Specter’s weird medical experiments and torture sessions. For reasons that defy understanding, Specter occasionally kills patients in ridiculous ways, such as releasing a vicious snake into a swimming pool so it can kill a patient in the water, or trapping a woman in a room full of bugs. (The image of cheap-looking plastic bugs “moving” across the patient’s body by way of stop-motion animation is particularly laughable.) While Specter terrorizes Lucina, her boyfriend, Chris Duncan (Nick Jolley), tracks her down, only to get rebuffed when Dr. Specter somehow disguises his asylum as abandoned building. One idiotic scene follows another until the climax, when Dr. Specter reveals his ultimate goal of sacrificing Lucina to Lucifer, played by a woman wearing the least convincing devil costume in movie history. Crap-cinema connoisseurs will relish Asylum of Satan, but mere mortals are advised to steer clear. In fact, here’s the best part, just to save you the trouble: During his search for Lucina, Chris learns from a cop that Dr. Specter “was picked up several times for devil-worshipping.”

Asylum of Satan: LAME

The Zebra Killer (1974)

         Hang loose, dear readers, because things are about to get confusing. This schlocky police saga was originally released as The Zebra Killer, though the story has no connection to the infamous “Zebra Murders” that took place in San Francisco around the time the film was made. Additionally, the movie has been released under myriad different titles, including Combat Cops, The Get-Man, and Panic City. By any name, this picture is barely passable. Produced on a meager budget and suffering from ugly cinematography during extended nighttimes scenes, the movie also features a clumsy performance by James Carroll Pickett as the villain, who comes across like a comedic exaggeration of a psychopath. Another problem is the turgid storyline, which wobbles between generating weak suspense and relying on overly informative expositional scenes. Cowriter/director William Girdler, who later made a handful of enjoyably loopy horror flicks, can’t seem to decide whether he’s making a slam-bang actioner or a taut thriller. What saves this highly problematic movie from itself is an assured leading performance by Austin Stoker, who subsequently starred in John Carpenter’s first proper feature, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). Stoker cuts s strong figure in The Zebra Killer, all confidence and swagger with an appealing touch of vulnerability. He plays Lt. Frank Savage (yes, that’s really the character’s name), a streetwise cop investigating a series of bewildering murders.

          A killer identifying himself in crime-scene notes as “Mack” slaughters seemingly unrelated people, planting a bomb in a station wagon one evening, pushing someone down an elevator shaft the next, and so on. (To confound potential witnesses, the killer, who is white, wears an Afro wig and blackface makeup while committing crimes.) Once revealed, the killer’s motivation is neither provocative nor surprising, but the point of a picture like The Zebra Killer is to generate pulpy excitement rather than intellectual stimulation. Girdler tries a little bit of everything, from chase scenes to kidnappings to shootouts, in order to keep blood pumping through the movie. He also veers slightly into the realm of blaxploitation, especially during a sequence featuring D’Urville Martin as a pimp. Set to a repetitive funk soundtrack, The Zerbra Killer is quite rotten in terms of production values and story. Nonetheless, the picture was made for the undemanding grindhouse audience, and in that context, it’s adequate.

The Zebra Killer: FUNKY

Project: Kill (1976)

Shot in the Philippines by an American director with American leading actors, this shoddy action/thriller picture contains a handful of moments that almost work, but the movie overall is incoherent and inept. Leslie Nielsen, back when he was still a wooden dramatic actor, stars as John Trevor, the chief instructor at a secret training camp for government operatives. He’s grown weary of using drugs and mind control to transform recruits into killers, so he flees the base and seeks refuge with former war buddies who are based in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the government sends John’s lieutenant, Frank Lasseter (Gary Lockwood), to track him down. Complicating matters is the fact that both men use the same drugs as their trainees, so John is going through painful withdrawal. Another wrinkle is the murky presence of a Filipino crime boss, Alok Lee (Vic Diaz), who wants to find John before Frank does. In theory, Project: Kill should be a simple chase story. In practice, however, it’s a mess. Director William Girdler, who generally fared better in the realm of monster movies, can’t do much of anything with the jumbled script, which is credited to David Seldon and Galen Thompson. Moreover, Girdler botches many scenes by creating logic gaps the size of the Grand Canyon. For instance, many scenes feature characters walking away from fistfights and/or shootouts as if nothing happened. Similarly, John spends most of his time romancing a pretty Chinese woman, Lee Su (Nancy Kwan), even though he knows his brain is disintegrating and even though he’s supposed to be finding a safe hideout. Furthermore, the picture’s action scenes are confusing—Frank and John are supposed to be super-deadly martial artists, but Lockwood (who is genuinely terrible in the film) and Nielsen move with the grace of skid-row drunks. Project: Kill also suffers from cheap production values and nonexistent transitions between scenes. Capping all of these problems is the difficulty of taking Nielsen seriously, given his subsequent career as a comic actor. In fact, one scene features a line Nielsen could have delivered in one of his Naked Gun movies—while lamenting to Lee Su that it’s hard to shake his mind control, John says, “I’m not programmed to love.”

Project: Kill: LAME

Abby (1974)

          Lest there be any doubt, Abby is a truly awful movie—even given the low expectations set by the premise, since Abby is nothing but a shameless riff on The Exorcist (1973) featuring an all-black cast. The scares are nonexistent, the script is schlocky, and the special effects are pathetic. However, the movie has one minor saving grace: William Marshall, the stentorian-voiced actor who lent unexpected dignity to the role of Blacula in two cheesy horror movies, plays the exorcist in Abby. Marshall’s elegant presence isn’t nearly enough to make Abby respectable, but his appearance is sufficient to make the movie watchable, at least periodically. It’s also worth noting that Abby was directed by William Girdler, who later made a string of colorful horror flicks—Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), and the completely insane supernatural epic The Manitou (1978). Abby isn’t as slick as the later films, but it’s just as brazen and zippy.

          The story, naturally, involves a young woman being possessed by a demon. Specifically, after Bishop Garnet Williams (Marshall) accidentally releases an evil god named “Eshu” while exploring in Nigeria, Eshu invades the body of Garnet’s daughter-in-law, Abby (Carol Speed), who lives back in the U.S. with Garnet’s son, Emmett (Terry Carter). Violence, vomiting, and vulgarity follow, until Garent returns from Africa for a supernatural showdown. Giving the material a blaxploitation vibe, cowriter/director Girdler features the wholesome Abby speaking in crude street slang while possessed—for instance, before kicking Emmett in the crotch, she squeals, “Shit, you ain’t got enough to satisfy me!” In another scene, Abby experiences an orgasm while handling a piece of raw chicken on a kitchen counter. (Make your own “finger-lickin’ good” jokes.)

          While it’s all exactly as derivative and silly and tacky as it sounds. Marshall does what he can to play the material straight, especially when he performs with Austin Stoker (Assault on Precinct 13), who plays Abby’s brother. Alas, neither Speed nor costar Terry Carter (a regular on the original Battlestar Galactica series) rise to the same level. Still, what’s not to like about a quasi-camp drive-in distraction that kicks off with Marshall releasing a demon by recklessly twisting the tiny wooden penis of a figurine that’s carved into the shell of wooden box? Safe to say Girdler harbored no illusions of making great art.

Abby: FUNKY

Sheba, Baby (1975)

Produced at the tail end of the blaxploitation boom—and in the waning days of leading lady Pam Grier’s initial popularity—this lackluster action flick is quite a comedown after the funky heights of previous Grier joints including Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Pam plays Sheba Shayne, a Chicago-based private investigator who returns to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, when she gets word that her dad is being hassled by local gangsters. Before long, Sheba’s dad falls victim to gun-toting thugs, so Sheba—with a little help from her pop’s business partner, Brick Williams (Austin Stoker)—unloads you-messed-with-the-wrong-mama vengeance on crime boss Pilot (D’Urville Martin) and his associates. Grier spends Sheba, Baby talking tough while looking great (her knockout figure is on ample display in costumes like the wetsuit she wears for the movie’s last half-hour), but Sheba, Baby is unmistakably second-rate. The dialogue is trite, the production values are mediocre, and the supporting performances are awful. Even the requisite funk/soul soundtrack, often a saving grace for shaky blaxploitation movies, is uninspired. Grier’s nomrally forceful acting falls victim to the general crappiness, because she often seems as if she’s delivering lines she’s just learned—it almost feels as if the movie comprises rehearsals instead of takes. Director/co-writer William Girdler was far more comfortable with in the horror genre, and after making this picture, he banged out a trio of demented creature features (from the campy 1976 gorefest Grizzly to the wigged-out 1978 supernatural flick The Manitou). For Sheba, Baby, he’s unable to conjure the needed vibe of frenetic violence and urban grime—the picture moves too slowly, the textures all feel phony—and it doesn’t help that Sheba, Baby is rated PG instead of R. Really, what’s the point of trafficking in a sleazy genre if not to present sleaze?

Sheba, Baby: LAME

Day of the Animals (1977)

          While it has a certain schlocky appeal, Day of the Animals is a significant comedown from director William Girdler’s previous critters-run-amok flick, Grizzly (1976). Whereas the earlier movie is a shameless Jaws rip-off, Day of the Animals is a mishmash of Hitchockian avian terror, eco-themed sci-fi, and generic “something is out there” spookiness. (The movie’s blunt alternate title? Something Is Out There.) The premise is that ultraviolet radiation released via ozone-layer depletion has transformed animals living at high altitudes into killers, which means a group of hikers on a remote mountaintop path become fodder for nature gone wild. The denizens of a town at the base of the mountain also fall prey to rampaging creatures. Day of the Animals features attacks by bears, birds, dogs, mountain lions, rats, snakes, and wolves, but these events are nonsensical—at some points, the picture suggests that animals have formed an army, and at other times, critters simply attack independent of each other. In other words, any old plot contrivance that helps endanger and/or kill a given character at a given time is acceptable to the filmmakers, who couldn’t care less about consistency.

          As with Grizzly, Girdler’s comin’-at-ya jolts and sturdy widescreen compositions ensure that Day of the Animals basically delivers the goods. Nonetheless, the movie runs out of gas far before its 97 minutes are through, although there are a few campy highlights. For instance, the bit in which rats leap from a turkey carcass like tiny acrobats is particularly goofy. The movie’s “best” moment, however, is the climax of Leslie Neilsen’s performance as one of the hikers—crazed with fear and hunger, Neilsen strips to the waist, screams about how he’s the god of his own life, impales a fellow hiker with a walking stick, tries to rape another hiker, and wrestles a bear. Good times. Christopher George plays the rugged leader of the hikers, and his gritted-teeth performance is entertainingly cheesy, while Richard Jaeckel plays it straight as a professor. Also present are B-movie fave Michael Ansara (playing the movie’s resident Native American) and actress/animal handler Susan Backlinie, best known as the skinny dipper in the opening sequence of Jaws.

Day of the Animals: FUNKY

The Manitou (1978)

          The supernatural horror flick The Manitou is about as gonzo as mainstream cinema gets. Featuring a demented concept taken to ridiculous extremes, this mesmerizing misfire combines demonic possession, Native American mythology, parallel dimensions, reproductive horror, sentient machinery, and probably a dozen other tropes of genre cinema, all wrapped up in a tasty package decorated with stilted acting, inane dialogue, and histrionic storytelling. There might be an interesting notion or two buried amid the melodramatic muck, but the beauty of something as strange as The Manitou is that redeeming values are beside the point; the movie’s spectacular awfulness offers a special kind of entertainment value.

          When the movie begins, Karen (Susan Strasberg) seeks medical help for a strange tumor growing out of her upper back. Physicians are astounded to discover that the tumor is actually a fetus. This revelation understandably concerns Karen’s on-again/off-again boyfriend, fake psychic Harry (Tony Curtis), who investigates Karen’s condition when medical science fails to provide an explanation. Eventually, Harry and a real psychic (Stella Stevens) dig up loopy scientist Dr. Snow (Burgess Meredith), who opines that the growth is a “manitou,” the reborn spirit of a Native American shaman.

          Told that one needs a shaman to fight a shaman, Harry treks to the Southwest and recruits John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara) to serve as a kind of exorcist. John Singing Rock says he can’t battle the Manitou until the creature leaves Susan’s body, and the manitou’s birth scene is one of the most insane moments in all of ’70s cinema: A miniature muscleman crawls out of a giant sack attached to Strasberg’s spine and then plops onto the floor of a hospital room, panting like a placenta-drenched pervert. Soon, this child-sized monstrosity is lurking inside a force field created by John Singing Rock, plotting some sort of supernatural takeover (and breathing heavily some more). “To quote a hackneyed line,” John Singing Rock says at one point, “This is powerful medicine.” You said it, friend!

          As directed and co-written by genre-cinema stalwart William Girdler (Grizzly), The Manitou is arresting simply because of how far it goes down the bad-cinema rabbit hole. Plus, to be charitable, some of the film’s images are genuinely unsettling: There’s a great bit during a séance, for instance, when a human head rises up through a tabletop as if the tabletop were an oil slick rather than solid wood.

          The acting is, of course, terrible, because no one can be expected to do much with this material, but Curtis has a few entertainingly bitchy line readings even as he trudges through various declarations of the obvious. Syrian-born Ansara, who had a long career as a voice actor in addition to his onscreen work, makes the fatal mistake of playing his role straight, so his wooden performance offers an amusing counterpoint to Curtis’ desperate hamminess. The movie’s high point, relatively speaking, is the trippy finale, which features (and I’m not kidding) a naked Strasberg shooting laser beams of channeled machine energy at the muscled little person as they float in a star field, battling for the final fate of the universe. Powerful medicine, indeed.

The Manitou: FREAKY